Hey Pepsimaxcasters… It’s been a blinding few weeks indeed. We have had some truly brilliant gigs – Leeds on Monday was mental… we had the Sheffield Wednesday firm in and it went off!!

And the The London Forum last Thurs was totally insane!! It was packed, the crowd knew every single word to every song and  everyone was jumping about and going crazy- at one point I thought the balcony was going to come down! We then went on and partied till the small hours in Camden… I didn’t feel to clever in the morning though!

I also wanna say a big thank you to the Pepsi Max comp winners for coming down and saying  hello – top geezers! Anyway just thought you’d like a sneak peek at one of our soundchecks. This is me doing “The Drugs Don’t Work” by The Verve – one of my favourite bands. Liam, Andy and I like to take it in turns to choose a song to cover to keep sounchecks fun! Enjoy… TC.

For the first in our Maxcast series, we have teamed up with Smivadee (aka Matt Smith) to get under the skin of our line up of Maxcast curators… first up, Tom Clarke from The Enemy, in a pub, keeping it casual.

They talk all things from how The Enemy got their name, Oasis breaking up, and Pirates or Ninjas…?

Check out the video…

Hey there Pepsi Maxcasters!

So an eventful week I have had indeed… I managed to skid off the A90 in my brand new TVR! I was driving in the outside lane and before I knew it I’d wrapped the car around lamppost! Just look at the state of it! It’s all ok though, it’s in the garage now and should be back on the road in no time and I walked away without a scratch. Lucky. So the lesson here kids is : be safe and drive carefully in your TVR’s

Gutted about Oasis btw. Can’t actually believe they’ve split up. It always seemed to be something that was on the cards and that ever present threat kept their fans on their toes but I still never imagined it to actually happen- It’s so final. So with this in mind I have been blasting “Live Forever” (Ironic as that was what was playing when I crashed my car!)

Tom

Fade’s Tour Diaries™….. part.3 in an intermittent series…

(or musings from across the globe.)

The Adelaide Shuffle

Not only does water run away down plug-holes the other way in the southern Hemisphere, but their dance moves have a distinct funk of their own. The Adelaide-Shuffle (modified from the erstwhile Melbourne-shuffle) is a spectacle to behold. Kind of like the Running Man, mixed-up with what we used to call the X-man in 1990, then sped-up and stripped of any recognisable “dancing” characteristics and replaced with the unsexy frenetic stomp of a wooden-legged man dealing with too-high a treadmill setting. People seem to bust this local move out at any given moment all over the club, for a burst of about 30 seconds of cardio intensity like a mating-ritual for ephedrine-drunk robots. It’s bad enough when the boys do it (and let’s face it, what dance move isn’t?) but some girls get involved too. It’s a wonder any pro-creation gets achieved at all in Southern Australia. This won’t be seen in a club near you soon. [*sauce got some footage tho…]

E-Cup Bolt-ons

The best self-description of a pair enhanced-breasts I’ve ever heard. Brisbanites don’t mince their words. They also party harder than anywhere else we’ve been this year. And look good while doing it. All year-round sunshine does wonders for keeping-up your beach-bod credentials and yet manage to never take yourself (or indeed anything) too seriously. The Monastery, Brisbane, we salute you. You bring the party.

The Return from Oz

22 hours in the air is just wrong. But coming down for one hour break to visit the toilets in Singapore airport is the most unexpected dose of luxury, your long-haul economy traveller can experience. [*pic attached] They are plusher than any of the hotels we’ve stayed in on this tour. They are nicer than my own bathroom at home. They are nicer than my whole flat tbh. Like when u go into a really flash restaurant loo and wished you lived there. (we all do that….right?). There is even an attendant guy actually cleaning- all the time- instead of offering you Chupa Chups and a £5 squirt of Hugo Boss. My parting tip to anyone flying-out East is to save your ablutions for Singapore airport.. and don’t do any home-improvements before you’ve taken notes there.

When I was a kid, I spent summers at my Dad’s loft in Soho (NYC).   You didn’t have to have much money to live there at the time; most people snatched up these huge places in the 70’s for the equivalent of a new car.  They were so big in fact, I remember roller-skating at high speeds around the furniture.

It wasn’t a destination neighborhood and other than the art galleries, there weren’t many restaurants or shops.  You could still see someone break into a car in the middle of the day, just like in the movies!

There was the racket-ball court on Spring and Thompson (made famous in the movie Big) I’d hang out there a lot, or spend hours playing Pacman at Ben’s pizzeria across the street, pouring over buttons at the Pop Shop, or longing for transformers at Forbidden Planet.

One particular place that I begged to be taken to every week was the Museum of Holography.  I can’t remember what street it was on anymore, its long gone, but they had great little gadgets to buy.  I was doing a gallery crawl this week and was reminded of how great Holographs are when I caught the James Turrell Show (see photos).

This same week, I also happened upon a shop that opened up in the basement of my old building.  It was an 80’s retro clothing store (photo at side), Keith Haring style graffiti and re-purposed t-shirts.  I hadn’t been in the space for 17 years. 

It used to be a recording studio called Greene Street Recordings where SO many great albums were recorded, Public Enemy’s Fear of a Black Planet, New Order’s Substance, Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation. But like most NY studios it was dark and sketchy, I interned there as a teenager and encountered cockroaches as big as my fist in the tape locker. I remember being up on a ladder pulling a session for Nick Sansano and when I looked down, the floor seemed to be moving.

I was hopeless as an Engineer’s assistant, but had fun working on sessions (aka getting coffee) and just being around some legends of Rock and Hip Hop; it was an atmosphere that made me think anything was possible.

D

x

 In the spirit of NYC, here is some great forward thinking R&B of the time.

 Nona Hendrix – Transformation

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ua1bjD81n5k

I have to include the video to Riot’s song Bloodstreets., they were the house metal band.  They shot this down the block in what was then an empty lot.  I stood transfixed way past my bedtime, eating Chinese food catering and blown away by the awesomeness of pyrotechnics and artifice.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuuPjZ6qz4Q&feature=fvw